This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

Court ruling expected soon on domestic violence challenge to the total Benefit Cap

On Tuesday 29 April, Women Against Rape and others held a vigil outside the UK Supreme Court in Parliament Square, to support the legal challenge to the government’s “total Benefit Cap”. The Cap, which limits a family’s total benefit to £500 per week, including rent and Child Benefit, traps women and children in violent relationships – a violent man in waged work is not capped, but the woman who leaves him, is. We went in to monitor the case, and anxiously await the outcome – the ruling is expected soon.

We ask organisations and individuals to support women and children impoverished by the Benefit Cap after escaping violent relationships. A legal challenge on behalf of affected families will be heard in the Court of Appeal in early 2014. Protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice

We are glad that the Liberal Democrats are highlighting some important issues that Women Against Rape has been working on for a number of years. These issues are: the rights of rape survivors seeking asylum; an end to the criminalisation of children in prostitution; an end to the prosecution of rape victims accused of making a false allegation; and an end to the imprisonment of women for non-violent offences.

The government and its Minister for Women Harriet Harman have made a great show of their commitment to support women against domestic violence. But measures in the Welfare Reform Bill which give traumatised victims of domestic violence only brief respite from the job-seeking requirement, and grant ex-partners more rights over children to prolong their hurtful and dangerous involvement, prove otherwise.

We urge you to help stop these uncaring measures before they become law. Please add your name to the statement at the end, and circulate to others concerned with women and children’s safety.